Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!clyde.concordia.ca!uunet!image.soe.clarkson.edu!news From: nelson@sun.soe.clarkson.edu (Russ Nelson) Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip Subject: Re: Anonymous FTP Message-ID: Date: 21 Dec 89 14:36:11 GMT References: <630229363.780000.LARSON@CRVAX.SRI.COM> Sender: news@sun.soe.clarkson.edu Reply-To: nelson@clutx.clarkson.edu Organization: Clarkson University, Potsdam NY Lines: 38 In-reply-to: LARSON@CRVAX.SRI.COM's message of 21 Dec 89 07:42:43 GMT In article <630229363.780000.LARSON@CRVAX.SRI.COM> LARSON@CRVAX.SRI.COM (Alan Larson) writes: --> If your system allows anonymous FTP, then it should map an --> unknown userid into the one used for anonymous FTP. The effect --> of this is that users who cannot spell anonymoose still get --> logged in as anonymous. --> --> Perhaps this idea is obvious to everyone else, and they discarded it --> for one reason or another. It wasn't obvious to me, and I thought it --> was a good idea. So I hacked it into KA9Q's NOS and it's running on --> grape.ecs.clarkson.edu. This has the problem that it will map errors in logins to other accounts to anonymous. Why should we map 'larfson' into 'anonymous' when I mistype my name while logging in? I will wind up with successful status, but will not be connected to where I thought I was. This is a reasonable objection. I think it could be solved by requesting the password saying something like: "Userid foobar not recognized, mapping it to anonymous". The curmudgeon in me suggests: Why don't we just request that people learn to spell, or has that gone out of favor since I went to school? I implemented this because my boss told me to make anonymous ftp as easy as possible. He says: "I want people who know nothing about ftp to be able to get on with no other instructions than 'ftp to grape.ecs.clarkson.edu'". Whatever happened to the dictum "be liberal in what you accept, conservative in what you generate"? -- --russ (nelson@clutx [.bitnet | .clarkson.edu]) Russ.Nelson@$315.268.6667 Live up to the light thou hast, and more will be granted thee. A recession now appears more than 2 years away -- John D. Mathon, 4 Oct 1989. I think killing is value-neutral in and of itself. -- Gary Strand, 8 Nov 1989. Liberals run this country, by and large. -- Clayton Cramer, 20 Nov 1989. Shut up and mind your Canadian business, you meddlesome foreigner. -- TK, 23 N.